


Who are the stars

by Builder



Series: Missing Moments [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky in cryo, CA: CW compliant, Emotional Hurt, Emotions, Feels, Hurt No Comfort, I feel like I need more tags, M/M, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, T'Challa tries to help, Vomiting, some sickness as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 21:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11906877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Builder/pseuds/Builder
Summary: The first day, Steve can’t leave the room.  It’s uncomfortable, freezing with humid air conditioning.  The plastic chair is so uncomfortable it’s practically bruising his sit bones.  There’s no reason for him to be there, but he can’t drudge up anything more important.  Nothing comes close to being as important as this.________________________________________________________________________________________________Bucky's back in cryo.  Steve can't deal.





	Who are the stars

**Author's Note:**

> Title from (and whole fic very much inspired by) Through Glass by Stone Sour. (Honestly it just came on the radio and I listened to it and was like, well this is very literal.)
> 
> I’ve been having some ideas for different variations of hurt/no comfort (or minimal comfort from parties who don’t completely understand) when Steve’s suffering because he and Bucky are separated. I know that’s not everyone’s jam, but I promise there’s still plenty of physical and emotional turmoil to make your world go round.
> 
> This one takes place right after the events of CA: CW and kind of weaves the post-credits scene into the narrative. It’s very nearly canon, and I don’t want to hear what I messed up on (because I know I always screw up something when I try to be completely canon).
> 
> Have you figured out by now the trigger warnings are in the tags?
> 
> Visit me on Tumblr @Builder051 (It's a lovely sickfic blog).

_I’m looking at you through the glass_

_Don’t know how much time has passed_

_But it feels like forever_

___________________

 

The first day, Steve can’t leave the room.  It’s uncomfortable, freezing with humid air conditioning.  The plastic chair is so uncomfortable it’s practically bruising his sit bones.  There’s no reason for him to be there, but he can’t drudge up anything more important.  Nothing comes close to being as important as this. 

 

Steve breathes in the slightly-antiseptic scent of the air.  His eyes burn faintly, but whether that’s from the presence of a chemical or just pure exhaustion, he’s not quite sure.  It’s probably the latter; he just doesn’t want to admit it.  Steve drops his elbows to his knees and his head to his hands.  There’s a bed waiting for him somewhere in this lavish building.  He just can’t will himself up on his feet to point his boots toward the door.  He can’t leave the glass tube that’s become the center of his universe.

 

Bucky looks so peaceful.  He could be asleep, gently dreaming and tucked safely under Steve’s arm, were it not for the light dusting of white-blue ice dusting his features.  The tiny crystals cling along his hairline and in his eyebrows and along his cheek-brushing lashes.  The image is imprinted on the back of Steve’s eyelids. 

 

He leans forward in the painfully hard chair so the top of his head wedges against the freezing glass.  He imagines his head in Bucky’s lap, sharing warmth and receiving comfort from the tears that are threatening to leak from the corners of his exhausted eyes.  But the real sensation couldn’t be more of the opposite.  The tube is frigid and devoid of the soft give that makes human touch so soothing.  The position brings him physically closer to Bucky, but the insistent presence of the barrier makes him feel as though he’s miles farther away.  It makes Steve’s stomach churn. 

 

T’Challa’s promised to keep Bucky safe.  Steve has no reason not to believe him.  He and the king hadn’t gotten off to the best start, but they’d finished on the same side.  And this, the offer of shelter, of whatever he and Bucky could possibly need, it’s impossibly generous.  And now, especially after Bucky’s already made his choice, it seems impossibly rude for Steve to just keep sitting here.

 

Time seems not to have any meaning.  He meant to stay with Bucky for a few minutes.  When T’Challa came to check on him the first time, he knew it had to have been a few hours.  Now it’s come full circle and Steve’s second guessing whether an eternity’s passed or just a heartbeat. 

 

But time has to be moving; there’s more evidence than Steve wants to admit.  The spectacular view outside the windows of the medical wing is growing dimmer.  It’d been barely morning when he’d held Bucky’s hand tightly and asked for the final time if he really wanted to do this. 

 

So he’s lost a whole day.  But what’s a day in a life better described in decades?  Or in a life when he just got Bucky back, and now it’s possible he’ll never have him again.  Never get to hold him, feel the warm touch of his skin…

 

The back of Steve’s neck prickles.  He’s almost shivering, but feels like he could be sweating too.  The tremor in his fingers is more than it ought to be from just cold.  Steve’s memory stirs, and through the haze of Bucky and Brooklyn, he realizes the fight at the airport and then the fight in Siberia took place in the last 48-odd hours.  They feel so much further away than, say, the last time he hugged Bucky to his chest before the war. 

 

His accelerated healing’s taken care of most of the bruises on his body, but it’s exacerbating the throb behind Steve’s forehead.  He takes a second to try and recall the last time he took a drink of water, but everything’s a blank.  Nothing’s mattered but Bucky. 

 

“Captain Rogers.”  T’Challa’s deep vice floats across the room.

 

Steve doesn’t answer.  He re-stacks his posture so he’s leaning into his chair rather than up against the cryotube.  He’s still hunched in on himself, and he’s doubtful that the shift has made him appear any less pathetic.

 

“You’re still with him.” 

 

Steve isn’t sure if he’s supposed to take it as a statement of the obvious or as a reassurance.  He raises his head an inch or so, but regrets it when gravity catches up and increases the throbbing of his headache and the pressure behind his eyes.  “Yeah, I…” He starts, not sure what he intends to say.

 

“I admire your commitment,” T’Challa says.  “He’s lucky to have you.”

 

“No, it’s, I’m lucky to have him,” Steve stammers.  The heaviness starts pooling in his bottom eyelids.  He wipes at the impending tears with one shaking hand.

 

“You’re not well,” T’Challa observes. 

 

“No, I’m fine.”

 

“You haven’t eaten.  Or slept,” the king insists.

 

“I don’t need…” Steve trails off.  But with each passing second, it’s becoming more apparent that he does.  The view out the windows has gone completely pitch black.  Sunrise has to have been just moments ago…

 

“You need to care of yourself,” T’Challa says.  “I have your room prepared on the floor above.”

 

“I appreciate it,” Steve whispers.  “But I can’t leave him.”

 

T’Challa takes a long pause, pressing his fingers together.  “You are determined.  But I can’t allow you to harm yourself.  I can have the doctor give you intravenous fluids.  That can get you by for a short while, but eventually you’ll have to rest.”

 

The offer is tempting for a moment, but Steve imagines Bucky laughing at him, calling him a punk.  Telling him off with a playful swat to the back of the head.  Then turning his voice serious to make Steve promise to take better care of himself. 

 

“I, god, I just…can’t leave him”

 

“He will be safe.  You have my word,” T’Challa says.  “I’ll sit with him myself for the night.”

 

Steve sighs.  It’s an impossible thing to ask of someone else, even though Steve was planning on doing it himself.  “I…”

 

T’Challa’s hand materializes under Steve’s arm.  “Please,” the king says quietly.  He doesn’t twitch at how much weight Steve puts into him on his way to standing. 

 

“There are basic provisions in your room.  Please, use the intercom to order whatever you’d like to eat,” T’Challa says. 

 

Steve lets him escort him to the elevator.  “I’ll be back, as soon as-as it’s morning.  I—”

 

“Don’t concern yourself.  Everything will be fine.”

 

Steve steps reluctantly into the elevator.  He watches T’Challa stride toward the cryotube and pause behind the chair where Steve’d been sitting.  When the metal doors slide closed, he lets himself lean into the wall and acknowledge how horrendous he feels.  The headache and clamminess are quickly giving way to nauseous heart palpitations. 

 

It’s part hypoglycemia and part panic attack (and part raw unadulterated emotion, but Steve doesn’t want to touch that part).  The motion of the elevator softly jerking upward has him cupping his hands over his mouth so he doesn’t dry heave in the modern metal box. 

 

The guest room is as luxurious as his room in Stark Tower had been.  Steve hardly takes it in, though.  He has to sit with his head between his knees because the walls threaten to close in. 

 

As soon as he’s sure he’d not going to vomit, he inhales a quart of Gatorade and half a dozen protein bars.  Then, still sitting in the middle of the floor, he lets the tears fall.

 

Steve hadn’t had time to mourn Bucky when he’d first lost him.  The fall from the train had been in the middle of the mission against Red Skull, and Steve couldn’t afford to stop and let the insurmountable avalanche of emotion smash into him.  Then after he’d been rescued from the ice, Steve’d been confused.  The passage of time was hard to follow.  And then in the blink of an eye, Bucky had been back.  And then there were the years of tracking him down.  And now he’s gone again. 

 

Not gone in the way he’s been gone before.  He’s not dead.  He’s not tortured.  But he’s still gone.  Inaccessible for the entirety of the foreseeable future.  And it’s with that thought still in his mind that Steve’s exhaustion takes over.  He falls asleep on the rug.

 

The second day, Steve starts his watch beside the glass tube early in the morning.  It’s still dark when he takes the elevator down one floor to the medical wing.  T’Challa is in the plastic chair Steve vacated the previous night.  He’s flipping the pages of a novel, but his expression’s too glazed for him to actually be reading.  A cart laden with a teapot and mugs has been pulled up beside the cryotube.  It’s as if T’Challa and Bucky have been sharing the libation.

 

“You’ve rested?” T’Challa checks as soon as he sees Steve.

 

“Yes,” Steve affirms.

 

“But not in the bed.”

 

“What?”  Steve subconsciously brushes his hand down the side of his face, and he finds the sharp imprint of the textured rug.  “Oh.”

 

T’Challa gives the ghost of a smile.

 

Steve turns his gaze to Bucky’s serene face behind the barrier of the glass.  He’s not sure why he feels like it’s so necessary to check; Bucky looks exactly the same as he did the day before. Peaceful.  Sleepy.  Like Steve is supposed to be feeling, up early after spending the night in T’Challa’s palace.

 

“I will bring up a more comfortable chair,” T’Challa says as he stands up and stretches, rubbing a hand over his lumbar spine and the curve of his ass.

 

“It’s ok,” Steve murmurs, looking back to Bucky’s delicately closed eyelids.

 

“It’s not,” T’Challa says.  He drops his book onto the tea cart and lifts the plastic chair to tuck it under one arm.  “The staff will replace it with something finer.  In the meantime, please, join me for breakfast?”  The king looks hopeful.

 

Steve glances from T’Challa back to Bucky.  The logic in him says he needs to re-assimilate.  Learn how to be around people again after three days of utter disaster.  But in his heart, there’s no contest.  “I’m… I just can’t,” he whispers.

 

T’Challa sighs.  “Alright.  I’ll have a different chair brought in immediately.”  There might be an undertone of disappointment.

 

Steve stands beside the cryotube as the king and the plastic chair disappear into the elevator.  He lets his forehead and right hand plaster to the glass.  Bucky stays peaceful and beautiful. Steve imagines drifting his fingertips through the ends of the long hair, trailing across the empty metal shoulder.  His hand goes white from contact with the tube’s frigid exterior.

 

It’s been over 70 years since he really touched Bucky like that.  It was hard to be together physically during the war, what with the close quarters and constant presence of others.  For the past few days, priorities have gotten in the way.  Steve’d tried to invite Bucky into an embrace the night before he’d gone back into cryo, but tensions had been too high.  Bucky’d bristled in Steve’s arms, and Steve’d been forced to let him go. 

 

True to T’Challa’s word, the improved chair is brought in immediately.  Two uniformed men bring a claw-footed and richly upholstered armchair from the elevator with enough noise to make Steve raise his head. 

 

“Oh, geez,” Steve mutters, torn between rushing to help, telling them to take it back, and exploding with a thousand thanks.  He ends up standing awkwardly in front of the glass tube as they maneuver the piece of furniture across the medical wing.

 

“You will be much more comfortable now, Captain Rogers,” one of the workers says as he angles the bulky chair so it’s positioned directly across from Bucky as if he and Steve are want to play cards or have a therapy session.

 

“Yeah, thank you,” Steve manages.  “This is…totally not necessary.  I’m fine, I just…”

 

“Are you in need of anything else?”

 

“No.  I’m fine.  I—this is too much already.”

 

Both workers nod and retreat, leaving Steve alone again. 

 

Steve stays on his feet for a moment before taking a step back to relax into the chair.  It’s only a matter of inches further away from the glass, but it may as well be a mile.  Steve grips the seat by its plump arms and noisily scoots it along the tiled floor until its close enough for his knees to touch the cryotube.

 

Time settles into its usual rhythm, but to Steve it’s still unnoticeable background noise.  The quality of light streaming through the windows changes, and two or three times someone comes by to refresh the tea tray with hot water and plates of cookies. 

 

Steve’s barely aware of what he’s doing as he sips warm liquid from the mug between his hands.  It does feel much better to be properly hydrated, but the dull ache in his head and sharper one in his heart remain unchanged. 

 

It’s dark again outside when he bows forward with his hairline jammed against the glass.  A fresh cup of tea sends swirls of steam into clouds of fog on the outside of the tube.  A single tear adds to the accumulating moisture on Steve’s cheeks as he whispers, “I miss you, Buck.”

 

On the third day, Steve brings his sketchbook.  He means to capture the paradise of scenery out the window, or maybe some of the ridiculously futuristic machinery within the medical wing. But he can’t bring himself to turn the chair around.  He can’t even force his head to turn away from the sight of Bucky’s serene face.

 

So that’s how the picture starts.  The soft outline of his pacifically closed eyelids graces the paper first.  Then the gentle curve of his nose and the peak of his cupid’s bow.  The features come to life before they encase themselves in the shape of face.  Each stroke of jawline, hairline, and cheekbone brings another modicum of impossible beauty to Bucky’s likeness.

 

Steve can’t make his hand draw the stumped metal shoulder or lines of the cryotube or the hard seat that props Bucky up.  It would bring in the darkly transparent barrier that’s a reminder of everything bad that’s ever happened to them.  So instead, Steve sketches in a plumped pillow under Buck’s head, a tangle of blankets around his bare chest. 

 

To Steve, there’s no sight more perfect.  He clearly remembers the last time he really saw it, the morning before Bucky shipped off back in ’45.  He remembers the feel of Bucky’s slightly stubbly cheek and his soft lips and even the subtle breeze of his breath.  The only real change now is his hair.  And Steve longs for the chance to run his fingers through it.

 

He pauses and lifts his pencil from the page where he’s been shading the shadow of bedding against Bucky’s pectoral muscle.  Everything feels so perfectly right that it has to be all wrong. The room’s suddenly hot even though it’s freezing.  And Steve’s jeans are too tight in all the wrong places.

 

He raises his eyes to make contact with Bucky’s closed lids through the glass.  He wants so badly that he’s ashamed of himself. 

 

The elevator doors sliding open sounds distant.  Heat is rising from his crotch up through his stomach and chest and up to his cheeks.  Steve hears his own blood pounding in his ears, and all he can think to do is get out of there before T’Challa comes up behind him.

 

“Captain Rogers?”

 

Steve’s already sprinting into the bathroom, slamming the door shut and locking it behind him.  He backs up against the heavy carved wood and breathes heavily.  He shouldn’t be feeling like this about Bucky when he’s frozen and unable to speak for himself.  He shouldn’t feel this way at all according to the outdated logic that still smites his thoughts, even though he knows better. 

 

“Goddamnit,” Steve mutters into his fist.  He puffs out a gust of air and cups himself through his jeans with his other hand.  Mad impulses of desire mix with desperation and shame, and Steve doesn’t know what to do.  He’s disgusted with himself.  He’s about to give in and yank down his zipper when his body changes its mind and he’s suddenly gagging morning tea into the toilet instead. 

 

When the wave of sickness ends, Steve’s thankfully flaccid again.  But he’s dizzy and prickling and suddenly hit with the realization that he hadn’t so much as closed his sketchbook before he ran away from T’Challa. 

 

“Shit,” Steve whispers.  He runs the sink, gripping the basin with both hands and doing his best to both hurry and buy time.  He shouldn’t be humiliated.  He didn’t do anything.  But the cloud still hangs over him, and the urge to cry joins the nebulous swirl of everything else still playing around his brain and hollow chest.

 

He doesn’t look at T’Challa when he steps out of the bathroom.

 

“You’re still unwell,” the king states. 

 

Steve isn’t sure if he’s referring to his depressed mood and loose emotions or the recent sounds vomiting or the unfinished sketch still sitting in the lavish armchair.  But it all adds up to the same thing.  He’s on the opposite side of the cryotube from where the chair is positioned, but he can still see the curve of Bucky’s ear and the dark curtain of hair obscuring the edge of his face.  And it’s again as if that’s the only thing in Steve’s entire existence.

 

“Yeah,” Steve chokes.  He leans back until he catches the wall, then slides down it.  Steve masks his face in his kneecaps, but he still hears T’Challa do the same.  He’s not sure how much longer he can do this.

 

On the fourth day, Steve leaves a thank-you note. 

 

Then he walks purposefully down the hall of the compound, not pausing to look through the window of the medical wing.  If he does, he’ll never leave. 

 

And now what he needs most is to step back out into the world and face the future.  Which feels like it’s poised to be this way forever.

 

___________________

_But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home_

_Sitting all alone inside your head_

**Author's Note:**

> So would you be mad if I did at least one more with the same plot?


End file.
